Musicians, if you want to stand out and invite an original guest on stage, please pick somebody else than Johnny Depp! Geez, if I had just counted the number of times I have read ‘joined on stage by Johnny Depp!….
Let’s see, just this year, the Black Keys were joined by Johnny Depp during the 2012 MTV Movie Awards held at Gibson Amphitheater on April 6th, a few days later, on April 11th, Johnny came on stage to help Marilyn Manson during ‘The Beautiful People’ and his cover of the Eurythmics‘ 'Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This’ at Club Nokia. On August 6th, he made an apparition at the Hollywood bowl just after Steven Tyler had screamed ‘Do you think we need a little help up here?’ and Depp helped Aerosmith on a song. On October 13th, he was on stage with Patti Smith at the Wiltern, strumming chords in rhythm during the encore songs. On November 15th, he stepped up on stage with Ke$ha during this Petty Fest at the El Rey and just last Thursday, Depp was back on stage at the Orpheum theater with Alice Cooper to play a few classics, such as the Beatles’ ‘Revolution’, Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’, the Who’s ‘My Generation” and the Doors’ ‘Break on Through to the Other Side’… and this was just this year, and I may have forgotten a few.
Do musicians think it’s cool to play a few songs with Depp? Probably! Is Depp becoming the necessary accessory to make a live show look cool? I guess! Is Johnny good friends with the whole music world? You have to think so! He plays guitar and likes it, we got it, he has collaborated with many artists from Oasis to Marilyn Manson, and has appeared in music videos for Paul McCartney, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Avril Lavigne, he is the cool pirate whose has inherited his punk rock looks from Keith Richards, we got it too.
Depp is the biggest rock star amateur those days, and I am not sure he can really play you know, may be he can, may be it’s just a pose. He doesn’t really age, and he currently has a mid-life crisis (he is single again!), so he probably thinks he is the real thing right now. He hangs out with the ‘edgiest’ ones (Richards, Manson and even Shane MacGowan) and he plays his roles on the big screen as if he were one of them. At the end he is trying way too hard but he will continue to fool everyone as long as rock stars will keep inviting him on stage.